Cairo Surprise leads My Frenchman Stakes field at Monmouth Park

Cairo Surprise led a field of eight 3-year-olds into the $100,000 My Frenchman Stakes at Monmouth Park, a 5 1/2-furlong turf sprint that offered a first black-type breakthrough to the horse with the sharpest recent form. Rebel With a Cause stood as the main counterpoint, a lightly raced gelding trying to turn promise into a stakes win for trainer Lauren Hobson and give Jose Ferrer a live turf mount in a race where one clean start could decide everything.

Hobson came in still searching for her first stakes victory after taking out her trainer’s license in 2023, and this was her first Monmouth Park starter and her third stakes try. Rebel With a Cause, a gelded son of Leinster owned by Tristar Farm, had made only four starts but had moved forward on grass, breaking his maiden at five furlongs on turf at Gulfstream Park on February 13 before finishing fourth in the William Walker Stakes at Churchill Downs on May 9. That William Walker was also a 5 1/2-furlong turf race, and the four-figure placing mattered because it showed Rebel With a Cause already belonged against open stakes company.

Cairo Surprise brought the stronger résumé. Cal Lynch’s gelding won the John J. Reilly Handicap by 6 1/4 lengths on June 7 after a 9 1/4-length allowance victory, and he had also won in Maryland and finished second in the South Mountain Stakes at Penn National. He entered with four wins and four seconds from eight lifetime starts and $181,600 in earnings, a level of consistency that made him the most established threat in the field. Lynch viewed the switch to turf as an upgrade, especially after Cairo Surprise’s lone grass start at Laurel Park on April 12 ended in a disqualification from first to second.

That local thread added another layer to the race. Cairo Surprise was bred and owned by Hope Haskell Jones, the daughter of Armory L. Haskell, the former founding president and chairman of the board at Monmouth Park, for whom the Haskell Stakes is named. The My Frenchman has often worked as a quick turf test, with Apollo Ten winning the 2024 renewal in 1:02.53, and the event’s history shows how often the surface and distance shape the result. On Thursday, the short trip made the break, the first furlong and the turn into the stretch the entire story for horses trying to launch late-summer campaigns with a stakes win.